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How To Get More Sales From Your Web Site

“More than 50% of web sales are lost because visitors can’t find content” –Gartner Group

“More than 40% of repeat visitors are lost due to a negative experience” –Zona Research

Clients have fears and objections when they visit your site

When prospects visit your Web site, they have some ideas about what they want to buy as well as certain fears and objections about buying from you specifically as well as from anyone else on the Web. Here is a list of some prospect objections that we can help you to overcome with the “Comprehensive Marketing Package”:

1. I don’t know who you are so how can I trust you?
2. What are you going to do with my precious credit card and personal information?
3. How can I contact you if I have a problem with my order?
4. How do I know that your site is secure?
5. What if the product I buy doesn’t work right or there is something else wrong?
6. Why should I buy from you when there are lots of other online sellers?
7. I’m having trouble finding information on your Web site
8. I can’t understand your product descriptions or you’re not giving me enough information.
9. I don’t see any large pictures showing me exactly what I’m buying.
10. I want to buy through the phone but you only have one method for me to use on your site. I can’t buy the way I want to.
11. Your site looks like you designed it yourself, I only buy from established companies.
12. You only offer one type of shipping, not the type I want.

Whenever someone comes to your Web site, he or she is asking these questions in one form or another. Is your site giving your customers confidence in dealing with you? Are they getting a good impression that makes them trust you and want to give you their money as well as the confidential information required to make a purchase through your site? Often it’s hard for Web site owners to see their sites objectively. We can help by applying an objective viewpoint along with marketing know-how that will get you the sales and increased profits that you want.

Risk reversal and guarantees: One way to overcome some of the objections listed above is with guarantees or risk reversal–People have enough issues and reservations about purchasing a product or service Online. Back your product with some attractive type of guarantee. A simple money back guarantee is a great one!

Powerful order grabbing copy is essential: Did you ever think about the fact that the only way your site communicates with your prospects is through the text and graphics that they see when they click on your home page? Because of this fact, it’s very important that your words and graphics make a great case for your product or service. If you don’t have a headline that grabs the prospects’ attention and interest, they will move on to another page that may not be yours.

The copy on your site should continue to interest the prospects so that they are likely to take the action you wish them to take. That is, they take the action of buying something from you or perhaps they give you their email address.

The process of creating powerful Internet copy is basically the same as it is for selling items through advertisements in print media. You only have a few seconds to attract the attention of the site visitor. If you don’t have a headline and body copy that get your visitor to take some sort of action immediately, you have lost them.

Be sure that your page titles and descriptions do a good job of selling your site as well as meeting top search engine ranking requirements. Often, the only thing the prospect sees on the search engine is your page title and description. If this does not attract them to click on your link, then you’ve lost the sale.

Part of the work we do to help you get more sales is to develop a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) that can help put your company ahead of competitors. The main question you can ask to develop a USP is “What makes my product/service different or better than all the others?”

In writing copy for your site, watch for grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Even the computerized spelling and grammar checkers might miss something like a word with several meanings. Get anyone you can think of to help you ensure that there are no errors.

Learn from your competitors: If you’re paying for each click-through to your site from Overture or Google, this can get very expensive. How will you know what words to use in selling to your market? We help you to determine this by doing a comprehensive competitive analysis to see what your most successful competitors are doing. We then take the best ideas and concepts to test on your site.

Of course, we also actually have lists of words that are more likely to appeal to your client’s interests than others. We use these words to get the prospect to take your most desired action.

The Web is a very anonymous place where no one knows who you are. Therefore, in order to get sales from prospects you must credential yourself. That means putting information on your Web site about you and your company with details about how long you’ve been in business, who you are, your education, where your company is located, your phone number etc.

When developing copy for your site, we help you to focus on benefits to potential customers. It is recommended that each page of the Web site have a headline that will let the potential customer know exactly what is on that page and grab their interest.

Getting The Job Done

How to collect email addresses of visitors to your Web site

We can help you develop an e-mail newsletter, ebook or white paper that can be sent to those who submit their e-mail addresses to you. We suggest that you use a free offer on the index page and on each of the other pages of your site in order to induce visitors to respond. We can help you automate the emailing of the information so that the sending requires very little work and will give an incentive to site visitors to leave their e-mail addresses.

These addresses become a great mailing list that can be used to develop new customers with little cost. It’s important when prospects give their e-mail address to you that you tell them that they may receive an occasional mailing or a regular newsletter. In addition, you should have a written site privacy policy that lets people know how you plan to use their personal information.

Success Stories: An excellent way to sell your products and services is with client success stories that can be used on your Web site. These stories can involve examples of how you helped clients to solve a problem with as much detail as possible or the success they had using your product. This approach has become an accepted way of promoting products for both large and small companies. Both existing and future customers will benefit from seeing how others have used your products or services.

Case studies: Related to success stories are case studies. These may be much more in depth than success stories and may include a deeper level of technical or specific information. They have more value if the company name can be mentioned but are also valuable without this information because they help potential customers think of new ways to use your products or services.

Testimonials: In addition, testimonials are also very valuable and should be used on your Web site on every page. They are especially valuable when they include the person’s name, company and photo. Be sure to get a written approval from the person being quoted about using what they said in your promotions. A good testimonial should give details about the positive qualities of the product. It should focus on the benefits of the product/service and ideally be from someone your customer, can contact (by phone or email). Rarely will a prospect contact the people who have given you testimonials but the fact that they could do so makes the testimonial believable.

Frequently Asked Questions: Develop a list of your product or service related “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ) for publication on the Web site as well as in paper form. Continued use of this technique with updated questions and answers will save lots of technical support phone calls and employee time. This can also be done with sales questions, which can help in selling products both on the Web site and off line.

Stoney deGeyter is the author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!. He is the founder and CEO of Pole Position Marketing, a web presence optimization firm whose pit crew has been velocitizing websites since 1998. In his free time Stoney gets involved in community services and ministries with his “bride enjoy” and his children. Read Stoney’s full bio.

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